A Visit From Chuck

The following is a rather lengthy, agonizing tale detailing a most unexpected appearance from one of those visitors that seem incapable of taking hints and, thus, never leaves. My 'net friend Quag7 has affectionately named this guest "Chuck" (which explains the title of this post). Unfortunately, Sarah is well acquanited by now with these types of visitors, and I'd foolishly assumed that I would never have a guest of my own to deal with. However, last week I did, and here is what happened ...

It was shortly past noon last Thursday morning (18) when I awoke a bit earlier than usual, thinking I had slept wrong and managed to pull a muscle in my side. I turned over and attempted to catch a few more winks of sleep, but was unable to find a position that would make the knot go away. In fact, by the time I finally gave up and headed for the shower, it had become sore enough to make me grit my teeth as I rose from the bed: it felt like someone had kicked me with a steel-toed boot very hard square in the left flank.

The shower relieved the sensation almost immediately, and I went about my usual auto-pilot shampoo & soap-up routine, letting my arms move mechanically about while my head started to tot up a list of what had to be done when I got to work. Upon exiting the shower, I frowned as that persistent kicked-in feeling returned almost the instant I started toweling myself dry. I worked my left arm around a few times, trying to loosen what felt like a nasty cramp or maybe some kind of gas bubble and ultimately gave up and went into the rest of my pre-work routine of dressing, starting the car a bit early, (engine seems to be having some issues running "cold" lately, possible tune-up needed this weekend), checking the news online, locking up the condo and leaving.

I dropped myself into the front seat, debating a stop at the drugstore on the way to work to grab a box of Gas-X pills, and was about halfway into a turn towards N Marginal Road when that leaden lump of pain in my side stabbed me hard enough to make me groan aloud. I sat motionless for a second, probing the pain site with my hand and realized with mounting concern that the pain wasn't receding at all, but intensifying and pulsing in palpable waves. Slowly the idea that this was not, in fact, a gas bubble began to dawn on me. Deciding that sucking this in wasn't going to fly, I parked the car and headed back inside to call Greg and let him know I'd need an extra hour or so to work this out.

By that point, my voice must have already reflected how I felt since he seemed to know right away that something was wrong. When he asked me what it was, I took the best guess I had, which turned out to be the right one: "I don't really know, but it hurts like a sonofabitch and feels almost like a kidney stone or something." I gave my co-worker Brian a call, or at least left him a message, asking if he could spot me for a couple of hours and then attempted to get some rest ... well, at least for a minute or two until the pain seemed to kick it up another notch and I was doubled up on the bed, starting to breathe like a locomotive and moan softly, wondering what the hell I should do to knock this down a bit. Attempting to void whatever was sitting around in my lower gut didn't help matters at all.

A solution presented itself quickly: I reasoned that since my shower a bit earlier seemed to make the pain go away, then taking another one was the smartest course of action. Stepping into the shower stall a second time and letting the water land directly on my side was an almost orgasmic experience that time: the relief was so great and instantaneous that my response probably would have sounded like something from an X-rated movie had someone been able to hear through the bathroom wall. I didn't care. I just slumped gratefully against the sliding panels on the stall and soaked up a little bit of heaven.

After about ten minutes, I had dialed the cold water mix all the way down and was starting to lose the real kick of bracingly hot water, and I knew already as my side had started to awaken from its heated slumber that there was going to be some pretty rough times ahead (at least until the hot water tank downstairs refilled its supply). I stepped out and toweled off just enough so that I wasn't dripping wet and started skulking around, looking for a heating blanket that I knew we had somewhere but had no luck finding it. After a few minutes, I had to relent and sprawled back onto the bed, still wet, starting to writhe around, and unable to find any position that would lessen the continuous fiery pressure that was now definitely moving down towards my lower abdomen.

Since I was out of hot water for at least the next half hour or so, by my estimation, I started to consider my painkiller options and (rather hilariously, in hindsight) opted to pop a couple of Tylenol gelcaps. Staggering downstairs and into the kitchen, I poured myself a glass of water and knocked it back in a rush to wash the pills down and get them working ... and almost immediately regretted doing so. By the time I'd made it back to the bedroom, my stomach was starting to do slow rolls, and I collapsed again onto the bed, clutching a pillow to my side and trying to will away the growing spinning nausea. Oh shit...

I'd barely made it to the 'loo before going off like Old Faithful: up came the Tylenols, the water, and who knows what the hell else since I hadn't had anything to eat since the previous evening. That was followed by a second torrent, and then a few good old fashioned dry heaves to get the point across: Don't do that again.

That was pretty much the point of no return. After that, with the afternoon descending rapidly towards all-out Hell, I made a semi-lucid, pain-slurred call to Greg, who asked if I'd had any luck getting Brian to come in yet. I hadn't, of course, and he told me not to worry about it and to get my ass to the hospital. I replied that there was no way I could drive a car in this state, and that I had to wait for Sarah to get home from work before I'd be able to get anywhere and she wouldn't be home for another couple of hours. I had tried to call her earlier at the wrong extension (nice form, there, Vic) and sent a couple of e-mails to various addys of hers, but she was away from the computer and tied up in the lab.

With two hours to kill before Sarah got home, I made a final, half-crazed (yet fruitless) search of the entire upper floor of the condo for that old electric heating pad, all the while battling waves of nausea and feeling the pain reach an unrelenting intensity that I can't think of any comparison to (and my points of comparison include breaking fingers and getting tooth fillings sans anesthesia). With pain meds effectively out of the picture, I basically spent the time lumbering in and out of the shower (eventually having the presence of mind to plug the drain and do some additional marginally-effective soaking in the accumulated, cooling, bathwater while waiting for the hot water tank to refill once again), kneeling miserably in front of the toilet, or trying very hard to lie absolutely motionless on the bed. It was an ugly, endless slog, made only barely tolerable by the wonderful, blessed, all-powerful shower, which (when running at sub-scalding heat) was nearly making me weep in shoft-lived relief every time I stepped back into it.

Sarah made it home around 6 and I was flat on my back in the tub, soaking up the last of the precious hot water and I begged her immediately to find that electric heating pad, which she did (how the hell had I missed it?). To my considerable dismay, the effectiveness of the heating pad was virtually nil in relation to the shower and I lay dripping wet on the bed, pad pinned beneath me, fruitlessly trying to dial down the agony and waiting out the hot water tank once again. Sarah was trying to get me to commit to the hospital, and I knew I needed to go, but I told her that there was no way I was going to be able to handle a waiting room in my state. She then said she would call an ambulance, figuring that I would be taken into care (and, by extension, drugged) far more quickly. That sounded a bit better, so I let her make the call while I hobbled into the shower for probably the sixth or seventh time that afternoon for one last anesthetic blast.

I made my way downstairs a few moments later (which Sarah wasn't very pleased about since my inability to move downstairs beforehand was part of what made her call the ambulance in the first place), walked slowly outside in a t-shirt sweats and socks and shivered as I lay down onto the stretcher and promptly started to throw up again in front of the half dozen-or-so people gathered outside wondering what the blazes was going on (don't worry, the paramedics had kindly provided me a towel for this).

Aside from being my first-ever trip in an ambulance anywhere, my ride to LakeWest was memorable for two reasons:

1) The paramedic treating me managed to get the IV line smoothly into my hand while we were in the middle of a surprisingly bumpy ride. That's some pretty impressive prick-fu.

2) There was some bizarre misunderstanding between us had the two paramedics thinking that I only had one kidney, which they relayed ahead to the hospital, followed by my hoarse, shocked "WHAT?" (I'm still not sure how that intuitive leap came about.)

Once at LakeWest, things get pretty mercifully faint as to what happened when: though unfortunately this narcotic dimming of memories was delayed a half hour and change as the promise of quick drug IV was quickly thwarted by the standard big hospital "Nurse A sets you up and asks your name and info, followed by waiting, followed by another Nurse who asks your name and info, followed by waiting, followed by appearance of The Doctor who asks your name and info and then decides to administer treatment via the second Nurse" rigamarole. Once that painkiller IV was finally hooked up, though, the fog began to roll in and the rest of that night is a jumble of conversations between me (mumbling or offering a thumbs-up to indicate comprehension), Sarah, and whatever Doctor or Nurse was in the room at any time, with a 20-minute adventure deeper into the hospital to be stretched out on another table and zapped by a CAT-Scan machine (this was kind of like being positioned in the hole of a 10' tall silver donut covered with switches and readouts). I wasn't paying a lot of attention to much of anything else: by then, I just wanted to sleep since the previous seven hours had utterly sapped me dry (in more ways than one). Thus, I spent most of my LakeWest stay drifting in and out of consciousness and trying not to accidentally rip the IV out of my hand while tossing and turning on my gurney.

Yeah, I was tossing and turning: the drugs weren't quite what I'd been hoping for. In fact, I was better off standing in the shower at home as far as comfort went. Apparently, at some point that night, The Doctor explained to Sarah and I that it was best not to dial down the pain to zero but to keep it around 5 so that I would know when the kidney stone left my ureter and entered my bladder at last, which would kill the sensations of pain in my left side instantaneously. The Doctor said that when this happened, the effect on me would be like being strung out on pure brown Mexican heroin (or some shit that sounded an awful lot like that) and that would be baaad, mmkay?

I figured saying "no" might somehow lessen my current weak-ass painkiller dosage so I gave The Doctor a thumbs-up and tried to rest. A couple of enthusiastic appeals for urine samples early on were fruitless as there hadn't been a drop of fluid in me for a couple of hours before getting to the emergency room, and whatever fluid IV they had started me on wasn't exactly getting Mother Nature on the hotline. It didn't really matter, as they had apparently lost their zeal to get me to piss in a cup when the giant CAT-Scan donut reported that I indeed had a 4mm guest wending its way through my system. Smile for the camera, Chuck.

After some more rest, I was given a pat on the head and taken out to Sarah's waiting car, dry-heaving most of the way, and clutching a plastic bag containing a plastic jug and a couple of paper strainers (you do the math) and a prescription for the same Percocet I still had leftover from my wisdom tooth extraction. I was told to set up an appointment with so-and-so at such-and-such a time once my guest left and have a nice night, etc.

Back at home, I fell almost immediately into bed, fumbled down a Percocet tab, drank a couple sips of water (which in itself was a battle to keep my hitchy stomach from rejecting) and dropped into an uncertain, fitful sleep punctuated by trips to the 'loo as my earlier fluid IV worked its wau through my system. A few hours later, stumbling through the dark towards the bathroom for the third or so time that night, I realized with a slow smile that the pain was gone: my guest had finally reached the waiting room.

Barring the appearance of a possible second guest (or maybe Chuck's crumbly coulda-been twin) that made Saturday an unpleasant (though Percocet and hot shower-maintained) echo of that awful Thursday, things have been steadily improving ever since. I was finally able to start eating more than a couple of spoonfuls of food at a time by Sunday morning, and actually had an honest-to-God full-on dinner Monday night. Barring a lone Pepsi on Sunday night, I've been almost entirely cold turkey from caffeine (and 100% so on the nicotine) for exactly a week as of this writing. Go team me.

About the only thing that hasn't improved is my guest, who has yet to leave the premises as of the hour of this writing, and I have long since grown exasperated with pissing into a jug in an attempt to retain my guest "Chuck" for further study. Being that 1) I am probably looking at a bill totalling at least a grand for my LakeWest adventure last week (and I'm not much for adding to that figure) and 2) I have a pretty good idea exactly what caused Chuck to crystallize in my left kidney in the first place, my zeal to capture him is also declining as nearly a week passes since he made his dramatic stage entrance.

Now now, don't get too uppity with my impatience: I still plan to try to catch the bastard when he leaves. Despite my near-certainty that my once-heroic Mountain Dew intake is 100% responsible for Chuck's entire existence, there is always that little uncertainty that there might be something else at work here (though I doubt it), so I have to at least give this a shot. Perhaps sensing this (as if a calcified crystallized chunk of excess chemical crud could do so), Chuck has been a very quiet and courteous tenant ever since he arrived, and has been extremely reticent to show himself at daily curtain calls. Unless he has somehow spontaneously disintegrated, I will certainly be very aware when Chuck makes his exit at last (though apparently the discomfort level will be nowhere near the scale of last week's extended suffering).